Is it possible to ask for more speech therapy at school with my sons. they are 10 and 11 and both go twice a week for a half hr. Obviously this is not enough, they have not improved much at all in the last couple of years. My 10 yo goes with other children because she has so many children that need help and even she admits that he needs to have one on one speech, but she cannot do that. If a person bugs the school enough and has others do it as well, will they maybe consider hiring another speech therapist? I was thinking today how rediculous this is that there has been no improvement, especially with my son that must go with other children, and they all work on the same letter even if that’s not what he needs to work on as much as other letters, because that’s what the other kids need to work on.
Re: more speech therapy
We were in a similar situation with our dd. She has an expressive/receptive language disorder and while she is continually progressing, it is because of my work with her and now through private SLP. I came to an IEP meeting in Sept demanding 1:1 and they granted it, but I have to tell you, it was a waste of my energy. They continued to work on the same boring stuff that does not apply to her problems. And I think she felt lonely meeting 1:1 with the teacher, who in my opinion, probable resented the fact that we tried to tell her how to do her job. We also remove her from school 2 days/week for private therapy. I bring her right back to school afterwards and the services she gets from the private SLP are SOOO much better. It is 1:1, but my dd has a great time. I know because I watch her on a monitor. They wrote that into the IEP that she is removed from school for private services by parents. I thought all was well and everyone was happy until our annual IEP meeting when they said I had to stop private therapy or they would charge us with truancy for removing her from school and they put her right back in group therapy and then tried to put her into a self contained classroom, which was completely inappropriate and recommended a self contained classroom at another school in our district. They were so adversarial at the meeting that we were quite shocked and appalled at their behavior. They even stated at the IEP meeting that the type of intensive language therapy we were seeking was not something they provided because they found that it takes too much time to remediate these language needs. Since then I sought the advice of a special ed advocate. She too was shocked at the statement that they do not remediate these foundational skills for language. She told me that they school district MUST address her needs no matter what. I told her about our experience and that in our opinion, the school district lacks the skillset required to address her needs. Her comment was “Then they have to oursource it.”. So that’s where we are right now. Fighting for an appropriate placement (which we already have) with extra services in the classroom and for them to acknowledge her needs and to drop their threat of charging us with truancy, which I believe is a misdemeanor.
Good luck!
You can request that the school pay for an outside therapist to do 1:1 with your son, citing the lack of progress in group therapy as the reason. You will need to put this in a letter to document the request. Provide copies of any documentation you have on his lack of progress. Remember to document everything. If they deny the request, make sure you get the denial in writing and an explaination of why they are denying the service.